The Internet is Roasting These 'Ready Player One' Homage Posters

Someone has to stop Ready Player One. The trailers have already told us what we need to know: It's a sci-fi action movie about a dystopian hellscape where the only refuge is a virtual world filled with decades of pop culture. From the handful of footage that's already out there, we can already tell RPO will be jam-packed with easter eggs carefully designed to tickle that one part of your brain that takes joy in recognizing something you kind of liked, once. The movie might be directed by Steven Spielberg, but it's tough to shake the feeling that Ready Player One will be anything more than a collection of brands and franchises referencing themselves for references' sake. It looks like a two-hour dream sequence set inside the mind of a character from The Big Bang Theory.

The newly-released Ready Player One "homage" posters collected by Slash Film do nothing to dispel that notion. Initially found on the streets of Santa Monica, these ads take classic posters and swap in RPO's protagonists. They are, in a word, upsetting.

Pasting these unfamiliar characters over iconic images of Harrison Ford and David Bowie just feels wrong, like a complete stranger butting into your conversation and pretending to laugh at your private in-jokes. It takes a lot for someone who works at a website called "Dorkly" to feel ashamed about what nerd culture has come to, but here we are.

Twitter users were already a little skeptical of Ready Player One, but seeing these off-putting Photoshops has put many over the edge. Case in point:

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Ready Player One is a fun reminder that everything I've ever loved is garbage and I'm garbage and the world would be better if people like me didn't exist

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i duno even on top of everything else it bothers me a lot that Ready Player One's marketing consistently points out The Iron Giant in a big combat scene given that The Iron Giant as a film centered entirely around antiwar themes and roundly condemning mindless violence

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people are pretty cynical about READY PLAYER ONE, but i personally can't wait to watch junket footage of wide-eyed journalists asking Steven Spielberg about his favorite level from Banjo-Kazooie or whatever the fuck.

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In this era of extensive political, cultural, and social tensions, it's really heartwarming to see that the entire spectrum of geek and nerd fandoms have come together in pure, undiluted hatred of "Ready Player One".